Month: September 2014

In order to better help you with your second paper, I’m asking for everyone to meet me for a short one-on-one conference in my office. Click here to open up the GoogleDocs sign-up sheet. You’ll notice that there are time slots open for Monday, October 6th and Tuesday, October 7th. Sign up on on a first come, first served basis, so make sure that you grab a time soon. Everyone needs to have a time scheduled by Friday, October 3rd. Failure to attend your conference will result in a ten point deduction from your second paper grade.

If you’re interested in following the apocalypse–or at least, talking to folks who are themselves interested in the topic–you should check out http://www.reddit.com/r/apocalypse. Head over there and let your doomsday prepper flag fly.

Rust is a new apocalyptic survival game that’s in beta testing right now. Here’s the creators’ summary of the game:

“Rust was inspired by games like DayZ, Minecraft and Stalker. It is a multiplayer game where you and other players are attempting to survive through the awful conditions, where humanity has been reduced to cavemen. Rust’s world is harsh. The environment is not kind. Bears and wolves will chase and kill you. Falling from a height will kill you. Being exposed to radiation for an extended period will kill you. Starving will kill you. Being cold will kill you. Other players can find you, kill you, and take your stuff. Fortunately for you, you can kill others and take their stuff. Or maybe you can make friends and help each other survive, using the game’s building tools to create a safe haven? We just make the tools, and allow the community to express themselves. They’ve made incredible things so far.”

Sounds like fun. If you’re looking for an apocalyptic adventure game, you can purchase an early access code through Steam.

In this class, rubrics will serve as the guideline for evaluation. You’ll be using them during peer reviews to help your fellow students improve their papers, and it’s the same standard I’ll use when assigning grades to your essays. You can download the first paper rubric by clicking here.

As you write your summary draft, you might find it helpful to have the grading rubric in front of you. This is the exact document I’ll be using to evaluate your final drafts. If you’d like it, you can download a copy by clicking here.

Today we talked about how we are slowly moving away from being satisfied with watching the apocalypse unfold and now want to participate in it through things like video games. Here’s a good example of that: http://endgameiscoming.com/ (Note: this requires you to sign in with Facebook and activate your computer’s webcam. If that makes you uncomfortable, don’t click the link). This isn’t a video game or movie advertisement—it’s for a book trailer. It looks like interactivity just became a little bit more popular.